Events

Writing Against Terror

Friday, 2 November 2012
12.30 - 5.30 pm

UWS Bankstown campus
Room 3.G.55 

“My concern is with the mediation of the culture of terror through narration—and with the problems of writing effectively against terror.”

Michael Taussig

Culture of Terror-Space of Death, 1984

 

Workshop Description

Terror is about breaking meanings. Its aim is to destroy the victims’ meaningful universe in order to break any source of certainty and cause absolute fear. When fear takes the place of meaningful certainties, terror achieves its ultimate goal: the unconditional control and disempowerment of the subject.

 

The workshop brings together postgraduates, academic, artists and writers interested in questions of narration and representations of subjective experiences of trauma and catastrophe. In the workshop these experience this question will be discussed under the rubric of “terror.” In contrast to the numerous (mis-)uses of the concept of “terror” in the political climate of 9/11, we associate it broadly with a wider tradition of thought, as the effect (and affect) of terrere (Lat. “to fill with great fear”). We situate the question of terror in the wider context of catastrophic memory, historical injustice, and narrative of political and intimate violence. 

Rather than focus on the topic of destructive operations of terror per se, in this workshop we aim to facilitate a conversation about resistance and opposition against terror—exploring the recalcitrance of the subject in the face of violence and its aftermaths—as evidenced in literary, artistic, cinematic, and scholarly practices.

Workshop Program

12.30 - 12.40 pm	Dr Magdalena Zolkos. Senior Research Fellow, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney Introduction
12.40 - 2.00 pm	Session I Danielle Celermajer. Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney Stories my grandmother told me. The private transmission of the body's memory
	Meera Atkinson, PhD Candidate, Writing and Society Research Centre, University of Western Sydney Writing trauma, transforming terror
	Hoa Pham. PhD Candidate, Writing and Society Research Centre, University of Western Sydney Talk story—Buddhist influenced stories of war and peace
2.00 - 2.20 pm	Break
2.20 - 3.40 pm	Session II Colm Mcnaughton. Radio Documentary Director, Monash University Recording ghost stories in contexts of collective violence: theorizing the imagination worker
	John von Sturmer. Performance Artist 'Coming ready or not': The Gloved Fist, the Fisted Glove
	Alejandra Canales. Documentary Director/Producer Presentation of a documentary film: ‘A Silence Full of Things’
3.40 - 4.00 pm	Break
	Session III Peter Banki. Philosophy @ UWS, University of Western Sydney The witness, the victim and the hunter: three modes of ‘writing against terror’
	Michelle Veljan. PhD Candidate, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney Reconciliation: from recalcitrant regimes to regeneration of society
	John Keane. Professor, Department of Government and International Politics, University of Sydney On A Democracy of the Dead
5.20 - 5.30 pm	Hermann Ruiz Salgado. PhD Candidate, Doctoral Program in Political and Social Thought, University of Western Sydney Closing remarks

 

Workshop conveners: Herman Ruiz Salgado, Magdalena Zolkos

The seminar is co-organized by:
Doctoral Program in Political and Social Thought, University of Western Sydney
The Writing and Society Research Centre, University of Western Sydney
Institute for Democracy and Human Rights, University of Sydney